The Defensor pacis is divided into three parts: in the first part Marsilius expounds the chief principles of his political thought by drawing on various treatises of Aristotle, most notably the Politics, and inquires into the origins and the nature of a well-ordered political community. In the second part, which is about four times longer than the first, he discusses and refutes a number of claims in favor of the church’s possessing temporal authority. The third part contains a summary of the main arguments of the entire work in the form of forty-two conclusions. As short as the first part of the Defensor pacis may be, its interpretation poses several difficulties. Marsilius’ intensive use of the Politics has led to the conclusion that he chose the Politics as an authoritative basis for articulating his own ideas (Sternberger 1985). Yet, a closer comparison between the political ideas of Marsilius and of his Greek predecessor reveals marked differences (Syros 2007; Nederman 1995a; Miethke 1989; Gewirth 1951).
Marsilius’ declared purpose in the Defensor pacis is to lay bare the singular cause of strife and dissension that afflicted the cities of Italy in his own time, that is, the papacy’s attempt to involve itself in and controls temporal affairs. The quest for the efficient cause of political phenomena assumes a normative importance in Marsilius’ thought. For instance, he identifies the efficient cause of the political community, its laws and its government. Following Cicero, rather than Aristotle, Marsilius ascribes the creation of human communities to the human need for self-preservation and mutual assistance. Departing from Aristotle, Marsilius does not depict the establishment of the community as the work of a single individual; under the influence of Cicero’s views on the civic function of rhetoric, he presents it as the fruit of the collective will of the first “patresfamiliasf who were summoned and persuaded by prudent individuals to band together into human associations (Nederman 1992). Families were administered according to the will of the father and villages were governed according to the judgment of their eldest members. The creation of a perfect community, on the other hand, presupposes the diversity of its constituent parts, which generates inner discord and strife. Its maintenance depends, thus, on the existence of laws and of a government with the task of regulating the relations among its members. Along these lines, peace is defined by Marsilius as the orderly function of the parts of the political community, as is the case with a well-formed living organism: whereas Aristotle looks upon strife as originating from the conflict between rich and poor, for Marsilius strife is the result of the attempts of the church to gain control over temporal affairs.
Human acts are classified by Marsilius into two categories: transient, that is, those that can benefit or harm someone other than the agent, and immanent, that is, those whose impact concerns solely the agent himself. This classification serves Marsilius as a starting point for the demarcation of the spheres of human and divine law: human law is concerned with transient acts, divine law with the immanent acts, although these two spheres may overlap. On the basis of the aforementioned distinction of human acts, Marsilius illustrates the raison d’etre and the function of the various parts of the political community, that is, to moderate the acts and passions of its members. The principal six parts of the political community are the agricultural, artisan, financial, military, judicial or deliberative, and the sacerdotal. In allowing for the possibility that farmers, artisans, and mechanics are an integral component of the political community, Marsilius deviates from Aristotle, according to whom farmers and craftsmen are to be excluded from any healthy form of constitution. In his classification of constitutions, Marsilius adopts the Aristotelian criteria of the number of those governing and of the extent to which a constitution takes into account and advances the common good. To these he adds a third one, that is, the degree to which a constitution comes into being and exists in accordance with the consent of the citizens and the laws. Marsilius takes this criterion as a key condition for the legitimacy and longevity of any sort of government, and gives it primacy over the other two. In keeping with this, Marsilius, in his account of the different types of kingship, looks on elective kingship as the best one, and makes a strong case for the limitation of royal authority. In this regard, he departs from Aristotle’s notion of the absolute ruler who exceeds the other members of the political community in virtue and political capacity and governs according to his will without laws.
Marsilius’ notion of justice approximates Aristotle’s concept of corrective justice, whose task is to correct potential excesses in the acts of the citizens and to bring them into equality. Consequently, Marsilius depicts the ruler as judge, whose function consists in repressing excesses and guaranteeing the due proportion of the acts of the citizens in conformity with the laws. Laws are not the product of a single lawgiver a I’Aristotle, such as Lycurgus or Solon, but of the collective prudence and experience of a number of people or even generations. The legislator humanus is the entire body of the citizens or the weightier part (pars valentior) that has to represent them. Marsilius draws on Aristotle’s doctrine of the collective wisdom of the multitude, according to which many people coming together can make better judgments than a small group of experts or wise men. Yet, although Aristotle’s theory applies to the appointment and correction of office holders, Marsilius extends its validity to legislation and regards the entire body of the citizens as the sole legitimate source of legislative and governmental authority within the political community. This model exhibits certain affinities to the organization of the city-states of medieval Italy, in which ultimate authority resided with the council of the citizens and the appointment of the podesta and the other office holders and the preparation of drafts of laws was entrusted to committees that acted on its behalf.
The Marsilian view of the exemplary prince is premised on the medieval notion of the ruler as judge and guarantor of justice. In enumerating the ruler’s virtues and attributes, Marsilius relies on Aristotle’s account of the qualifications requisite in the possessors of the highest offices of the government. The prince should epitomize prudence and justice, virtues that are indispensable for the administration of justice, and equity, which enables the him to make decisions in case the laws exhibit gaps (contrary to Aristotle, Marsilius does not define equity as the modification of deficient laws). Moreover, the would-be prince should be motivated by love for the existing constitution. Further, he needs coercive force (Aristotle speaks of the great capacity for running the affairs of the political community, but due to a mistake in William of Moerbeke’s translation of the Politics, Marsilius interprets this as military force), in order to be able to enforce his decisions and to punish transgressors of the laws.
In illustrating the relationship between the legislator humanus and the government or the ruler, Marsilius employs Neoplatonic motifs: the legislator humanus is the primary cause and the government the secondary. Moreover, in terms of Aristotle’s biology, Marsilius sees the function of the legislator humanus as analogous to that of the soul during the creation of a living organism; the legislator humanus appoints the government as the counterpart of the heart, which is in charge of setting up, differentiating and sustaining the other parts of the political community just as the heart is in charge of creating of the other parts and organs ofa living organism. Marsilius differs from the majority of medieval thinkers in being rather indifferent to the question of the best form of government, although he does mention in passing that kingship might be the best one. His aim is rather to provide the outlines of a universal model that would be applicable to various political realities. In this sense, Marsilius makes the unity of the political community contingent not on the existence of a single ruler but on the proper and harmonious functioning of its parts under a single government.
The first part of the Defensor pacis provides much of the basis for Marsilius’ teachings about the organization of the church in the second part, although there are a number of discrepancies between them. The community of the faithful constitutes the highest authority within the church and possesses the power to nominate and appoint the clerics and to monitor them in the performance of their duties. It also has the right to decide and determine the interpretation of Scripture. The latter is the task of a general council, in which the faithful or their delegates voice and discuss their opinions and vote. Marsilius views the priesthood as an integral part of the political community that performs, like the rest, a civic function. Marsilius denies the pope the right to issue decrees of coercive character and reserves for him solely the power to call an ecumenical council and to reinforce the decisions and interpretations of the latter.
With regard to the relations between the emperor and the pope, Marsilius argues that the pope and the general council are subject to the power of the emperor that the sovereign pontiff receives power over other men only with the permission of the emperor. Marsilius expatiates on these issues in the Defensor minor, which is a sort of epitome of the chief principles of Marsilius’ political theory, as set forth in Defensor pacis. At the outset of that work, Marsilius explicates the term iurisdictio and, afterwards, denies the coercive power of the clergy. Large portions of this work deal with questions of excommunication and the plenitudo potestatis.
Marsilius’ ideas on the precedence of temporal over spiritual power animated scholarly debates on the repubLican or imperialist interpretation of Marsilius’ political thought. Marsilius’ views on the superiority of emperor to The pope served to underpin an “imperialist” reading of the Defensor pacis, whicH found its strongest advocate in Quillet 1970. A number of scholars, on the other hand, saw Marsilius as an ardent apologist of republican ideas and have related his political theory to the political realities That prevailed in late medieval Italy (Gewirth 1951/56, 1979; Skinner 1978; Syros 2007; cf. also the discussion in Nederman, 1995b).
See also: > Ibn Rushd, Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Hafid (Averroes) > John of Jandun > Political tAristotelianism > Political Philosophy > William of Ockham
World History
